Aim

• Have an overview of basic principals of construction in a computer system and be familiar with the foundations of the operating system.

Knowledge and understanding
For a passing grade the student must

• be able to explain the concepts of pipelining, cache memory, virtual memory and operating systems

• be able to describe how these concepts collaborate in a modern computer architecture

• be able to compare the performance of different architectures considering the instruction set, pipelining and memory organisation.

Skills and abilities
For a passing grade the student must

• evaluate different architectures and estimate their usage

• be able to give a written overview of important characteristics of a computer architecture and an operating system.

Contents
The different components of a computer system and their interaction will be described. A computer systems performance depends upon different factors such as the programs, instruction set and architecture. The course will cover, among other things, memory management, different types of buses and parallel processors. Pipelining and cache memory technique are two fundamental principles which will be studied. The course will also touch upon examples of embedded systems and highlight the operating systems role in an efficient, fully functioning computer system.

In the operating system part of the course, the following subjects will be discussed:

• The design of operating systems.

• Different types of operating systems.

• Processes.

• Memory management.

• File handling.

Literature
Brorsson, M: Datorsystem: program- och maskinvara. Studentlitteratur AB 199901. ISBN: 91-44-01137-7.
Silberschatz, A, Galvin, P & Gagne, G: Applied Operating System Concepts. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 0-471-36508-4.
Supplied material.